


Sabbatical

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [129]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, YCMAL 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28223640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: “Stop pouting before it’s even pouting time,” Jared says.“I can pout whenever I want to, you’re not the boss of me,” Bryce mutters.“That’s not true,” Jared says. Jared is very much the boss of him and they both know it.
Relationships: OMC/OMC
Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [129]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/849798
Comments: 33
Kudos: 317





	Sabbatical

Summer’s — summer’s summer. Jared trains under Arvan with the usual crew, Bryce trains with his usual guy, they chill a lot with Raf and Grace and Chaz and Ashley, who feel almost more like, Jared doesn’t know, cousins or something than friends by now. The way he can go months on end without seeing them but the second he does it’s like no time’s passed. 

Grace has cut her hair really short, and Raf’s done the opposite, letting his grow out, and Ash got a tattoo — her and Bryce bitch about the pain for a bit — but they’re basically all the same as they were a year ago, all feel like home to him even though Calgary only gets to be home in the offseason.

Jared goes up to Edmonton to visit Julius when he pops in for a week for dumb media stuff, while Bryce has a ridiculous staycation thing with Erin — that’s code for renting a hotel suite all of a couple blocks from Bryce and Jared’s place for no purpose other than splashing around the pool, and Erin dragging Bryce from store to store and Bryce not even looking at price tags before handing the cashier his credit card, but Bryce was insistent on Erin getting something for her high school graduation, so whatever. Jared and Julius do absolutely nothing while Jared’s there except eat and watch TV and bitch about media and tell each other when they find something funny on the internet. It’s great.

Jared and Bryce eat a ton of his dad’s increasingly terrific cooking, and Bryce helps Erin shop for university shit, and they do e-tours of places in Vancouver until Jared finds one he likes and that doesn’t make him wince when he thinks about the rent. Well, it does, because it’s Vancouver, but Bryce patiently reminds Jared he makes almost a million dollars a year and Bryce makes over _six times that_ until Jared can no longer talk himself out of it. 

After their anniversary — Bryce buys him too much as usual, Jared does too this year, most currently living in a box in their closet that Bryce goes slightly pink looking at, and he looks often — they fly back so Jared can sign the lease and move some stuff out of Elaine’s and and Bryce can visit with Elaine and Gordie and Gail for a bit, do some early birthday stuff with them.

Jared’s new apartment is in a good location, not far from Gabe and Stephen’s house, which is pretty much perfectly placed between the practice rink, arena, and airport. According to Stephen, Gabe test drove to find the perfect location like a complete nerd, including timing rush hour versus lulls, and Jared can absolutely see Gabe doing that. Appreciates that Gabe did that. Jared was just google mapping it, Gabe’s test seems like better data. 

It’s small, but it feels good, all natural light — well, when it’s sunny, which isn’t going to be all that often — and shiny new appliances, and Jared feels weirdly grown up, maybe because he’s never had his own place he picked before, just went from his parents’ to Bryce’s, shrugged and went with what was suggested when he got to Edmonton, not really caring much about it, then moved in with Elaine when he got to Vancouver.

He likes his place, likes it better when Bryce is in it, helping him put together a dining room table he’ll probably never use, the light hitting his hair so it shines almost as gold as the chain around his neck, the two of them sleeping on a mattress on the floor because they fucked up the order of things and they’re too tired to put the bed frame together. He’ll probably like it less when Bryce isn’t there with him, but he thinks he’ll still like it. Hopes so.

They drive from Vancouver to Whistler, get in a mini-vacation before Bryce’s birthday — two adjoining rooms, per the advice of one Dave Summers, which is an annoying waste of money — and get back to Calgary on Bryce’s 25th birthday, go out for a fancy dinner in a private room with the training crew and Jared’s family. His dad’s on his very best behaviour, even pats Bryce on the arm a couple of times. Dad also makes Raf blush with all the compliments of his play in the Finals, which is frankly adorable, and a good chunk of the conversation is ‘shit on the Scouts over nice food’, which Bryce is clearly enjoying. Jared doesn’t mind it himself.

*

And then it’s all over, training winding down, Jared packing for camp, Bryce stumbling all over him getting in the way, which Jared can’t be too annoyed about because he knows Bryce doesn’t know what else to do when Jared has to leave again. He’s coming with Jared this time, though — they’re driving it, since Jared kind of needs his car and excess baggage fees are absurd, and then Bryce is going to fly back to Calgary after he gets in one last quick visit with his mom. 

“You are literally going to spend the next two days with me,” Jared says when Bryce looks particularly kicked puppy as Jared packs his laptop, which was an anniversary present he did not actually need. At least Erin appreciated getting Jared’s barely even past warranty old one as a university present. “Twenty-four hours a day. Sharing a very small car for a good chunk of that time.”

“You want a bigger car?” Bryce asks. “I can get you a bigger car.”

Jared scowls at him, and Bryce gives him a perfectly serious face for about two seconds before he cracks a smile.

“Stop pouting before it’s even pouting time,” Jared says.

“I can pout whenever I want to, you’re not the boss of me,” Bryce mutters.

“That’s not true,” Jared says. Jared is very much the boss of him and they both know it.

Bryce snorts and then gets particularly disruptive, wrapping his arms around Jared from behind and burying his face in Jared’s hair, which is not conducive to Jared’s packing efforts. Jared says so, but Bryce just mumbles something and keeps on hindering him.

“Nope,” Jared says when Bryce’s hands start creeping under his shirt. “I need to get this done, I don’t want to get halfway to Vancouver before I realise I forgot something important.”

“Flames are going to be in Vancouver in two weeks,” Bryce says.

“No guarantee you’d be playing that game,” Jared says.

“If I’m not I could send it with Chaz,” Bryce says, and before Jared can protest that Chaz might not either, “Canucks are in Calgary right after too.”

Jared doesn’t know if it’s Bryce being stubbornly logical or the fact that Bryce said all of that while unbuttoning and unzipping Jared’s shorts that sways him. Obviously a combination.

*

It’s a scenic as hell drive through the Rockies, enough to make Jared consider doing it on the way back to Calgary at the end of the season. After the first leg of the trip they land up in the best hotel you can get in the dead land between Revelstoke and Kamloops, which is not saying much. Jared’s clearly gotten spoiled by NHL hotel standards, which is not a great revelation. Mere years ago he was lucky if it was a hotel instead of a motel and he was stuck with an asshole roommate who talked in his sleep, and now he’s turning his nose up at a three star hotel.

“I’m a snob,” Jared says with great despair.

“Can I talk shit about this place now?” Bryce says. “Because it sucks.”

“It kind of does,” Jared admits.

“How hard will you judge me if I ask to get back in the car and keep driving?” Bryce asks. “Because Salmon Arm has a decent hotel.”

“How far’s Salmon Arm?” Jared asks.

“Twenty minutes, half an hour?” Bryce says.

“Moderate judgement,” Jared says. He really doesn’t like this place, but he’s also tired and doesn’t particularly want to get back in the car.

“I’ll take it,” Bryce says, and they keep driving.

Bryce waits in the car when Jared gets their room, which ends up being a really fucking good call because the front desk clerk is clearly a big Canucks fan, recognises Jared before he even hands her his credit card. Jared texts Bryce a frantic ‘shelter in place’, getting a bunch of question marks in reply, and then he has to go out and sneak him in a side entrance lest he have to explain why he’s sharing a room with one king bed with The Enemy, so that’s great. This is a great trip. Jared’s really enjoying this trip.

“Quit grumbling and tell me what you want from room service,” Bryce yawns.

Jared quits grumbling long enough to order a club sandwich, then resumes grumbling.

“Bed’s comfy,” Bryce says. “Way comfier than at the other place.”

“No near misses with Canucks fans at the other place,” Jared says.

“We could have said we were training buddies or something,” Bryce says.

“Training buddies sharing a room to what, save a hundred and fifty bucks?” Jared asks. “A room with one king bed?”

“And that I was just here to hang out for a bit,” Bryce continues. It’s a little disturbing how effortlessly the lie comes out, particularly because Bryce isn’t a great liar.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” Jared says.

“Summers gave me a few excuses if things were like, asked,” Bryce says. “Mutual friends with Chaz, met years ago at a camp and still hang out, stuff like that.”

“That’s all true, though,” Jared says.

“Yeah but isn’t like, ‘we’re super in love’,” Bryce says. “Which I think was the part Summers wants to avoid.”

“Yeah,” Jared says. And the part Bryce does too. 

And Jared, to be fair, at least when it comes to like, the media. He’s starting to think of coming out to the Canucks room, considering Gabe has and, no matter how closely Jared watched, nobody has treated Gabe like — differently than anyone else, kept their distance. He doesn’t know if telling them one thing about himself will open up the floodgates though, lead to them finding out who exactly Jared’s married to, and while they’re cool with Stephen to the point he has wine nights with some of the wives and girlfriends when the Canucks are on the road, they would probably not be cool with the whole ‘Flames leading scorer’ bit, so. He doesn’t know. He’s still worrying it over in his head, so premature he hasn’t mentioned it to Bryce yet. 

“What’s up?” Bryce says.

“Would you be cool with me coming out to my team?” Jared says. “Not like the level of what Gabe knows or anything, just like, not hiding the fact I married a dude.”

Bryce is quiet. “Can I think about it?” he asks finally.

“Yeah,” Jared says.

“I know you — you can come out to anyone you want to, that’s like, your right,” Bryce says.

“I know,” Jared says.

“I need to think about it,” Bryce says.

“Okay,” Jared says.

“And you should probably talk to Greg before you do anything,” Bryce says. 

“I should,” Jared agrees.

“Maybe Summers,” Bryce says. “He’d probably give you a call if I asked him to.”

“Probably,” Jared says.

“I need to think—”

“No hurry,” Jared says. “Season hasn’t even started.”

“Yeah,” Bryce says. 

The food arrives with a knock, and Jared doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. He retrieves it, club sandwich and salad for him, a giant steak with veg and mashed potatoes for Bryce — can take the boy out of Alberta, but can’t take Alberta out of the boy.

“You’re the one from Calgary,” Bryce argues when Jared says as much.

“Yeah but I’m a BC boy now,” Jared says.

“I’m a BC boy,” Bryce mutters.

“Nope,” Jared says. “We swapped.”

“You can’t just be a BC boy,” Bryce says, sounding genuinely agitated. “You have to earn it. And you can’t be a BC boy: you don’t even like sushi.”

“Mhm,” Jared says around a mouthful of mashed potatoes he poached while Bryce was distracted with his BC boy outrage.

“Hey!” Bryce says.

Jared smiles at him and goes for another bite before Bryce starts protecting his plate from Jared’s machinations.

*

“You can,” Bryce says when they hit Chilliwack the next afternoon.

“Hmm?” Jared says, more interested in finding a good playlist — the radio’s really started to grate, especially when a decent station goes fuzzy — than anything else. Final leg, so it doesn’t have to be perfect either, just decent.

“Your teammates,” Bryce says, and Jared looks up from his phone. “If you want to tell them you can. Like. The husband thing not the—”

“Not the you being my husband bit,” Jared assures him. 

“Okay,” Bryce says, blows out a breath, then another one.

“You sure?” Jared asks.

Bryce takes a hand off the steering wheel to give Jared a so-so.

“I’m not exactly in a hurry,” Jared reminds him. “Have to talk to Greg before. Should probably talk to Summers too.”

“Yeah,” Bryce says.

“The whole team knows Gabe’s got a boyfriend,” Jared says. “And doesn’t treat him any differently.”

“Yeah that’s kind of like — don’t think I’d be cool if I didn’t know that,” Bryce says. “I don’t want you to — like obviously it’s your choice I just didn’t want — I dunno.”

“I get it,” Jared says. He’s not sure he one-hundred percent does — hell, Bryce is ending it with ‘I dunno’, he’s not sure _Bryce_ knows what he’s trying to say — but he definitely gets Bryce being wary about Jared opening himself up to scrutiny, particularly with how shit with Deslauriers went down. “I think I’ll just — if I’m asked something I’m not going to lie by omission. It’s not going to be me with a megaphone telling the team before a game or something.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Bryce says, but he relaxes anyway. 

Jared reaches over, squeezes Bryce’s thigh. “You sure?” Jared says.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Bryce says. “Can we take this exit?” he asks.

“Uh,” Jared says. “We’re like an hour away.”

Bryce gives him a glance.

“I told you to piss when we got lunch,” Jared mutters.

“And you were right and I was wrong,” Bryce mutters back.

“ _Fine_ ,” Jared sighs, and makes Bryce buy him an Iced Capp to fulfil his ‘need the facilities, should purchase an item’ obligation, texting Elaine to give her their ETA while he leans on the car.

“Your Iced Capp might be poisoned,” Bryce says when he returns. “I ordered and he said ‘I’m a Canucks fan’ in this super flat voice before he made it.”

Jared snorts. “I’ll take the risk,” he says, and when Bryce’s hand lands on Jared’s thigh about ten kilometres later, Jared switches his drink to the other hand so he can lace their fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> We end yet another arc, with another arc springing up to follow because these boys are absolutely RUTHLESS.
> 
> LET OTHERS HAVE THEIR TURN, GUYS.


End file.
